Mayor Naheed Nenshi announced a finalized funding deal for the city’s Green Line LRT expansion project in January, alongside NDP Premier Rachel Notley and Finance Minister Joe Ceci. Securing a provincial commitment for funding the Green Line is one of the city’s priorities heading into Alberta’s 2019 election.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi announced a finalized funding deal for the city’s Green Line LRT expansion project in January, alongside NDP Premier Rachel Notley and Finance Minister Joe Ceci. Securing a provincial commitment for funding the Green Line is one of the city’s priorities heading into Alberta’s 2019 election.
CALGARY—As the provincial election draws ever closer, Calgary will be a critical battleground for votes — and the city is making its wishes known.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi outlined the city’s priorities Monday, accompanied by a new website where Calgarians can see some of the key issues that city officials say they face ahead of the 2019 vote. Top concerns include provincial party positions on the massive Green Line transit project and the Springbank dam, funding for the city’s low-income transit pass and affordable housing, and cannabis revenue sharing.
Nenshi also urged Calgarians to get educated and question candidates about city issues when they come door-knocking.
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The mayor said the website isn’t intended to advocate for or against certain parties or candidates.
“We’ll let Calgarians make those decisions, but we’ll certainly make it very clear to people where there are holes and where there are innovative ideas.”
The city is also sending a survey to Alberta’s political parties to give each one a chance to outline their stance on a variety of issues. They’ll then post their responses online.
Mount Royal University policy studies professor Duane Bratt said Calgary is a crucial piece of the upcoming election, just as it has been in past years.
Experts, including Bratt, have described the path to election victory in Alberta as a “three-legged stool”: to form government, a party needs to win most of the ridings in at least two of the three large blocks of voters in the province — Edmonton, Calgary, and rural Alberta.
Voters in the province’s smaller or rural communities will almost certainly elect United Conservative Party MLAs, while Bratt said Edmonton is likelier to vote NDP, but the party could lose in some of the city’s suburban ridings. That leaves Calgary as an important battleground — something Nenshi noted at Monday’s announcement as well.
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“We know this election will be won and lost in the city of Calgary,” he said.
But Bratt said the city is ultimately just one voice among many groups issuing policy wish lists ahead of this year’s provincial campaign.
“Undecided voters are not sitting there wondering what Nenshi thinks,” he said.
Municipal priorities in a provincial campaign are generally easy to predict, Bratt said — but it remains to be seen how city leaders handle a potential shift in provincial powers.
“My sense is there’s going to be a bigger clash between Nenshi and (UCP Leader Jason) Kenney than there was between Nenshi and (Premier Rachel) Notley.”
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The Alberta election has to take place by the end of May. The writ could drop any time, and a speech from the throne to open a new session of the legislature is planned for March 18.
Madeline Smith Madeline Smith is a former staff reporter for Star Calgary.
